…because we’re only human. Because we’re only animals. Because we’re only a rare form of biological life on a semi-cool semi-conducting planet of almost one hundred naturally occurring elements some 93Mmi/149Mkm from our star, the sun,พระอาทิตย์, sol, sole, soleil, sonne, zon, sunce, slunce, soare, słońce, ήλιος, сонце, солнце, aurinko, güneş, mặt trời, 태양, 太陽, شَمْس… Did I forget ‘mata hari‘? Yes, the ‘eye of the day’; who could forget?

People are scared. People are frustrated. People are devastated–blacks, Latinos, intellectuals, LGBT’s, old folks, and now Jews, too, everybody but arch-conservatives. People are losing sleep at night, wondering what the future holds for themselves, and wondering what it holds for their children. For most people are not so selfish, really, not truly, because their families come first. The problem is that the circle doesn’t always extend so far beyond that—unless there is a common threat—or unless you’ve got religion… (More …)

“Bernie Sanders on Brexit: The World Economy is not Working for Everybody” (minor HuffPo headline from the day after the Brexit vote). Get it? Got it. Bernie is a ‘Leaver’, albeit for different reasons than Boris and Nigel; or at least he’s not a clear-cut ‘Remainer’, not even as much as Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn, who held his nose and shut his samosa-slot, and meekly supported the ‘Remain’ bloc, only after forty years of protesting the EU and only after his own rise to power. Damn by feint (!) praise, perhaps?

Yes, there was also a leftist ‘Lexit’ (‘Left Leave’) vote, with the same goal as Brexit, just another reason and another season for getting there. This is the difference between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, and ultimately the reason I couldn’t support Bernie, even though his ideals are closer to mine than Hillary’s. (More …)

I know I know I know: Bernie’s not really a ‘Communist’, so to speak, not really, much less a Bolshevik, even if he DID say that we could learn a lot from Cuba and Nicaragua. He’s right. We could. BUT: that’s not Scandinavia, and their system of social welfare, which is what his electoral narrative is all about. Narrative does not equal truth. This is the definition of socialism, like it or not, as defined historically, as defined by Merriam-Webster:

“A social system or theory in which the government owns and controls the means of production (as factories) and distribution of goods”. Ouch. (More …)

True enough, guess I’m a confirmed incrementalist and gradualist, takes more disciplined to stay on track, but also less disruptive if you can pull it off. I’m glad the concept of ‘socialism’ is back in play, just looking for a new updated version of it…

…was released today by Thor Wyndham, Sander’s campaign manager and currently a graduate student in Political Science at Columbia University in New York City. According to Wyndham, the core principles of Sander’s political philosophy inform the platform and are as follows:

My wife says Donald Trump reminds her of Mandarin ducks, not just the hair, but the personality. Myself, I was thinking more like Peking duck. What do you think? Ni hao. Ni hao ma?

The Repubs brought this on themselves, of course, this ‘theatre of the absurd’ style of politics that now has brought celebrity mogul Donald Trump to the brink of the Republican nomination for President. This has its origins in the obstructionist tactics that even mainstream Republicans used to inflict their inherent racism upon the country for the last seven years, offended that a black man could be smarter than the lot of them, and without even trying, they holding on to the politics of the Wild Wild South, negroes ‘wanted dead or alive’, frustrating Obama at every move simply because he’s a black man…

In a way, Trump’s the perfect payback for the a$$hole treatment that the Repubs have exhibited over the last seven years, during which not only was racism not overcome, but was in fact doubled down. The question now is whether the Democrats will take advantage of this opportunity, or whether they instead will take the bait and succumb to the same level of absurdity, throwing caution to the wind in favor of long-pent-up desires and agendas. With Trump at the helm, Dems should be able to waltz to the Prez, and maybe pick up a house of Congress to boot. But will they? (More …)

So what’s all this (c)rap about ‘Establishment’ candidates, and the notion that D. P. Trump and Bernie Sanders are the desirable anti-Establishment alternatives?

The Establishment generally denotes a dominant group or elite that holds power or authority in a nation or organization. The Establishment may be a closed social group which selects its own members (as opposed to selection by merit or election) or specific entrenched elite structures, either in government or in specific institutions…

…In fact, any relatively small class or group of people having control can be referred to as The Establishment; and conversely, in the jargon of sociology, anyone who does not belong to The Establishment may be labelled an “outsider”–Wikipedia

Got that? No? Well, it’s quite simple, really. It’s all about THEM: (fill in the blank). THEY can be anyone you want, anyone you just love to hate, be it the so-called Establishment, the military-industrial complex (cue rat-a-tat), the secret government (cue ghostly sounds), the Illuminati (remember them?), or you-name-it… See where this is going? Yes: how do you spell C-O-N-S-P-I-R-A-C-Y (Note capital letters)? Now, no one disputes the thousands of little conspiracies that occur everyday, but ‘conspiracy theory’ is all about the Big One: the idea that they’re all connected… (More …)

For better or worse, Bernie, “We’re-All-In-This-Together” is not a religion. Spirituality? Maybe, but I doubt it. Nice try, though. It’s okay to be Jewish, you know. It doesn’t mean anything bad, as long as you’re not a tool of the modern state of Israel. So feel free to clarify that, ASAP, but obscuring your ethnic origins by muddying up religious waters is not helpful…

So Bernie sounds like a ‘secular humanist’ to me, and not a ‘practicing Jew’. But I’m not interested in politics right now. I’m interested in religion. So is ‘secular humanism’ a religion? Naah, not really. Why not? They’re all just belief systems, aren’t they, ‘secular humanism’ and every religion? So what’s the difference? Does a religion have to have a God? Buddhism doesn’t really have a God, and Islam allows no images of one. Hinduism has loads. So what’s the difference?

Short answer: plenty. In fact, secular humanism DOES have a God, and its name is mostly ME. That’s the difference, and that’s the opposite of what religion is all about. Religion is all about being a part of something bigger than you, and secular humanism is all about individuality, and individualism, specifically this individual, and all too often (drum roll here, please): ego. God help us. (More …)

…crazy, baby, like WOW, brother, like don’t f*ck with my ETERNAL NOW, sister, feeling the Bern and the rising tide, of the coming revolution and time on our side, blows against the empire and folks too proud to beg, quinoa muesli tofu granola and the gluten-free fertilized free-range yolk-free three-minute egg, man…

So Trump takes his lumps like he planned it that way all the time, but the Big News is that he lost; not that Cruz is any better, for those of us of liberal bent, badly bent but not yet broke, thank you. Cruz is an ignorant moron, too, of course, but he can be beaten (thank you, evangelicals!). The Big Scare for those of us with working cerebellums was that Trump would run the primaries and it (the Republican primaries) would all be over before it really even started, and we Dems would be left to our own best guesses and the vicissitudes of Fate to determine whether we’d live or die, and how and why…

But that won’t happen now, and by the time Trump’s lost two or three primaries, even if he’s won the same amount, he’ll likely give up, given the odds of losing, because if there’s one thing Trump’s not: it’s a loser; quitter maybe, but not loser. Narratives can always be adjusted and back-filled to mitigate any lack of initial logic, but defeat is hard to finesse and explain away. That, of course, depends on who the Democratic nominee is shaping up to be…

So why do we Democrats have this death wish that refuses to quit? Why do we insist on being the losers that Repubs portray us as? Call us idealists, call us starry-eyed optimists, call us die-hard revolutionaries, call us conscientious objectors, but mostly… call us for a good time: 867-5309. Okay, so let’s call it idealism. That’s a good narrative. (More …)